Suppose you are at a live jazz show. The drummer begins a drum solo. You see the cymbal jolt. You hear a clang. And you are aware that the jolt and the clang are part of the same event. This is a case of multisensory perception. In my book, I …
People sometimes say things like the following: Cabernet Sauvignon tastes different to an expert wine taster than to a novice; or, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony sounds different to a seasoned conductor than it does to someone just hearing it for the first time. But does wine literally taste differently (or the …
Last summer I tried to learn how to surf. I learned how to paddle to catch a wave, how to “pop up” to my feet on the surfboard from lying flat on my stomach, and how to turn on the board to surf down the wave once I caught it. …
For the last day of blogging my book The Emotional Mind, I’m going to skip straight to the last chapter on mental architecture. This is where propose a control theory of the mind as a whole. It is perhaps the most ambitious and speculative chapter of a book that is …
Thanks to John and the team for letting me take over the Brains Blog for the week. Over the next five days I’m going to summarise some of the key ideas in my new book The Emotional Mind: A control theory of affective states (Cambridge University Press). The book grew …
Section 3 of The Implicit Mind asks: how can we improve our implicit minds? What can we do to increase the chances that our spontaneous inclinations and dispositions get it right rather than act as conduits for bias and prejudice? It is tempting to think that one can simply reflect …
Spontaneity can give rise to actions that seem “unowned.” Tremble and shake on a glass platform suspended over the Grand Canyon, and you might ask, “I know I’m perfectly safe, so why is my body acting like I’m not?” Have a friend point out to you that when asking questions …
